Mo. River flooding, Monona-Harrison Co. line

Federal, state and local officials this week will begin damage assessments of homes impacted by flooding along the Missouri River. Joyce Flinn, with the Iowa Emergency Management Division, says the inspection teams will include representatives from her office as well as FEMA and the Small Business Administration.

“This will actually be an aerial assessment at this time because many of those homes are inundated with water,” Flinn said. The assessments will begin Wednesday (July 6) in Monona, Harrison, Pottawattamie, Mills and Fremont Counties. Flinn says an assessment of homes in Woodbury County will be conducted later. The work will help state officials who are seeking federal funding to assist

“There are different degrees of damage, but if a home sits in a lot of water for several months – regardless if it’s eight feet of water or three feet of water – it’s probably going to be destroyed,” Flinn said. State officials currently estimate more than 500 homes, mostly in rural Iowa, have major damage or have been destroyed in the Missouri River flooding.

(Pat Curtis/Radio Iowa)

AMES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Department of Transportation says it will delay the installation of a flood wall along parts of U.S. Highway 30. The work closure had been scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, west of Missouri Valley. Because of the delay, the road will remain open to travel on Tuesday.

The department says flood water is still filling the basin that extends north and south of the highway, but appears to be leveling. Water has stabilized south of the highway, and is only rising slightly to the north. Department officials say they will notify the public of any future flood work along the highway after the department further assesses the site conditions.

The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office has released a cumulative report on arrests and accidents which occurred over the past week. Officials say on June 25^th, 25-year old Justin Michael Evans, of Sidney, was arrested on charges of burglary in the 3^rd degree, operating without owners consent and theft in the 5^th degree, after an incident was reported by Evelyn Thompson, of Sidney, the previous day. And, 38-year old David Duane Thompson, of Poteau, OR, was arrested June 23^rd, for being a Felon in Possession of a Firearm, operating a non-registered vehicle, and for having an improper tail lamp on the vehicle.

Officials said also, on June 28^th, no injuries were reported following an accident just south of Farragut. The Sheriff’s Department says Roger Stooker, of Farragut, was in a 1996 Ford Ranger pickup, which was parked on the side of 240^th Street. As Stooker pulled away, his vehicle was hit on the driver’s side by a 1999 Saturn letter carrier’s vehicle, driven by James McQueen, of Farragut.

Earlier in the month, on June 19^th, an accident was reported to have occurred in the 36-hundred block of 150^th Street in Fremont County. Officials say Nathan Whitehead, of Sidney, was driving a 2008 GMC truck, when the vehicle left the road and began to rollover, before hitting a light pole. No injuries were reported.

Authorities in Montgomery County report three-people were injured during a single-vehicle accident early this (Monday) morning, six-miles southwest of Red Oak.  Officials say 40-year Martha Anngeline Oltmanns, of Villisca was traveling north on Forest Avenue at around 3:55-a.m., when she failed to negotiate a turn at Fernwood Avenue.

The 2003 Ford Taurus she was driving went straight off the road and into a ditch before hitting a driveway ditch at 2796 Fernwood. The car flew over the driveway before coming to rest in a flower garden belonging to Raymond Cooper the 2nd, of rural red Oak. The accident caused the vehicles’ airbags to deploy.

Oltmanns, and two passengers in the car, 40-year old Jennifer Fitzwater, of Princeton, MO, and 41-year old Scott Gibbons, of Villisca, complained of injuries. The trio was transported to the Montgomery County Memorial Hospital by Red Oak Rescue. A third passenger in the vehicle, 34-year old Jay Lininger, of Villisca, was not hurt.

Damage to the car, which is registered to Bruce Fitzwater, of Villisca, was estimated at $6,500, while Cooper’s property sustained approximately $1,000 damage. Martha Oltmann was cited for Driving While Suspended, Failure to Maintain Control, and for failure to have insurance. An additional charge of Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) is pending completion of the accident investigation.

(Updated 7-5-11 5-a.m. with corrected name of Gibbons, per Sheriff’s officials)

All-terrain vehicles used to be just for farmers, but more recreational A-T-V users are appearing in Iowa and more kids are taking the handlebars and getting hurt or killed. Pam Hoogerwerf, injury prevention coordinator at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital, says too many parents are turning their untrained children loose on these powerful, dangerous three- and four-wheelers.

“They need to be riding the correct-sized machine,” Hoogerwerf says. “We’ve got way too small and young age of kids driving huge machines that they have no business trying to operate just because they’re heavier and they’re harder to manipulate.” Many of recent A-T-V crashes that resulted in serious or fatal injuries involved kids that weren’t wearing helmets. Hoogerwerf says helmets are a must, as are hard-soled shoes or boots.

“Even though summertime isn’t the most comfortable time to wear long sleeves and long pants, they really should be doing that because we see a lot of lacerations either from brush or barbed wire fences,” she says. Many accidents occur when two kids are on one machine and it hits a bump or rounds a sharp corner and the passenger falls off.

“The seats look like they can accommodate more than one child on them but that’s absolutely not the case,” Hoogerwerf says. “ATVs are made for one person and for one person only because the machine is so rider-active and that’s where we’re seeing a lot of problems with kids putting more than one on there.” She notes, A-T-Vs are not toys. Kids need to ride on age-appropriate machines and anyone under 16 should be closely supervised. For more tips, visit: atvsafety.org

(Radio Iowa)

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is wrapping up a three-day campaign swing through Iowa on this Independence Day. Bachmann’s bus pulled up at the statehouse late Saturday afternoon, as Bachmann was the closer for the three-week-long “Tea Party Bus Tour” that had attracted a handful of the G-O-P presidential candidates. When Bachmann took the stage, nearly all of the folks in the Tea Party crowd got to their feet and never sat back down during her 25-minute speech.

“The Tea Party gets it. It’s not a political party. It’s an idea and it’s an idea that has captured the hearts and minds of the American people and it’s lit a flame all across the United States, so much so that I know without a shadow of a doubt that Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” Bachmann said, the crowd joining in to repeat that last phrase about Obama, which has become a signature line in Bachmann’s campaign speeches. Bachmann, in the midst of her third term in congress, told the crowd she had never voted to raise the debt ceiling and did not intend to do so even if Republican leaders in congress strike a deal with President Obama.

“We’ve got a message not only for Iowa, but for the United States of America. We’ve got a message for all the politicians in Washington, D.C. We’ve got a message for the president of the United States,” Bachmann said of herself and the Tea Party. “Enough is enough. Stop spending more than you take in.” Bachmann, who started the “Tea Party Caucus” on congress, told the Iowa crowd she has been the Tea Party “voice” in Washington, D.C. “And the politicians started waking up in the halls of congress. They know you’re here,” Bachmann said. “They’re listening to you. They’re paying attention to you.” Bachmann said it was time for the Tea Party to help “draw a line in the sand” on a variety of financial issues, from future federal bail-outs of failing industries to greater public scrutiny of the Federal Reserve.
Bachmann is one of two Republican presidential candidates who plan to walk in the Clear Lake 4th of July parade today. Newt Gingrich is the other. And third G-O-P candidate plans to be in three other parades. Rick Santorum will walk in parades in Urbandale, Pella and Iowa Falls today (Monday). During the last Iowa Caucus campaign, Hillary and Bill Clinton walked the 2007 Clear Lake 4th of July parade route together. Republican candidate Mitt Romney was in the same parade.

(O.Kay Henderson/Radio Iowa)